First Kiss - A Harry Potter One-Shot
by Katie Trillion
Summary: What is life like as a Dementor? What do they experience? And what if one Dementor kept coming back to our heroes?


First Kiss, a Harry Potter Fanfiction/ One-Shot

* * *

**Warning** \- _NOT TO BE READ AFTER DARK._

**So I wrote this because I thought 'What would a Dementor experience' then I thought what if every Dementor who comes into contact with one of our characters, what if one of them was always the same one, and it kept coming back? Please enjoy!**

* * *

Hogsmeade seemed darker than usual, eclipsed by the shock of the recent events, the deaths, many deaths, but the triumphs were little. Voldemort was dead, and many other Death Eaters, Bellatrix, Thicknesse, Dolohov, Greyback, but the others, those who'd fought and died, Lupin, Tonks, Lavender... and Fred. The cheerful shop windows were dull and melancholy and sadness permeated every house, sliding under doors and between the cracks in windows like serpents.

Seventeen-year-old Hermione Granger walked alone through the snow-muffled streets, her outline nearly lost, blurred into a faint shape by the still-swirling snow, wrapped in a thick grey coat and with her bushy brown hair tied back in a ponytail, and there were flecks of snow in her hair. The Three Broomsticks, for some reason, was still open for business, but she ignored it. Somehow, she didn't want the warmth of a Butterbeer today.

She turned into a side alley without meaning to. And froze.

Shrouded in both the darkness of its cloak and the alley's shadows, gliding slowly, inexorably along, was a Dementor. It stopped, then bent over the huddled body that was hunched up against the wall in a futile effort to protect itself against the creature's sucking power.

One of the thing's grey, rotting hands was clamped on the person's chin and was slowly, inexorably forced their face upwards, and was kissing, no, it was _sucking_ at the person's mouth. Then, as though sensing Hermione's presence, it looked up from the limp form.

The thin black fabric of its hood was thrown back, revealing... Hermione felt her stomach do a flip. The cold diffused outwards from the creature, and she could feel it slithering through her veins like something alive. Her breath steamed in the air, and she opened her mouth but somehow she couldn't scream, couldn't open her mouth, couldn't move a muscle.

The Dementor's skull was smooth and the bone that showed was greyish white, with a thin layer of scabbed and ragged grey skin pulled taught over its empty eye sockets, and the indents of the emptiness still showed, a darker grey beneath the rotting, peeling skin, staring sightlessly.

Its mouth was a circle of darkness, a midnight vortex in its face against the swirl of the snow, and there were scarlet lines of blood and a few already-faint blue traces around its edges, where the Dementor's lips should have been, but they quickly faded away into nothing, leaving the traces of someone else's blood. It ran down from the figure's mouth where the hard jutting bones of the Dementor had cut into the skin in the thing's constant search for souls.

Hermione reached for her wand, but one rotting, scabbed hand reached out and caught her wrist in a vice-like grip. Its other hand stroked her hair. Then it backed away a little, and Hermione braced herself for the horrible, soul-deep sucking.

But something else was emanating from the black-swathed body now, a sort of black mist that curled in snake-like tendrils through the air. Fascinated, Hermione stepped forwards. The mist coiled around her like a snake constricting its prey.

Then memories flooded in a poisonous river through her mind.

* * *

_Hunger. It was born, it was _made_ to be hungry. There was a space inside it, as deep as a black hole, unable to be filled with a soul. When it woke, the first overwhelming sense was hunger, all-consuming and irresistible. _

_Frost spread over the ground where it walked, and the patterns heralded it with its intricate writing, white portents of doom. Nebulous darkness followed it, swamping light and gnawing at happiness, sending all good emotions to the deepest depths of hell and left them to burn._

_The Dementor - it did not know the name, but the humans called it that - glided _

_through the world, spreading despair, knowing nothing, being nothing except that peculiar absence of life, the lack of a soul. _

_Then it discovered feelings. It could try to describe how the feelings tasted, using words it didn't quite understand, picking them from the babble of words and things it had learnt; there was chocolate happiness, the sticky fondant sweetness of first love, all from the memories that were still bright like new paint in the sepia, parasitic expanse of its own, there was the lemonade fizz of excited anticipation, maybe at a Quidditch match or waiting for a birthday, and all of the feelings were felt second-hand, sucked from victims it did not yet know how to exploit fully. It was still young, still learning._

_But still there was the emptiness. It filled the young creature like a disease, and every indistinguishable day and night, the hunger, the hole where the soul should have been grew wider and deeper, a black hole sucking all into its depths but is never filled. _

_And now the island, dark and forbidding with its one building that jutted from the inhospitable spire of bare rock. What the humans called Azkaban. _

_Many people were taken there. At first it was a feast, but now... there weren't many memories left. Most of the inmates became moaning wrecks within a few weeks, crouched in the corners of their cells, rocking back and forth. After maybe two months, two and a half if they were lucky, they were silent, still rocking, but no longer speaking, no more happiness. Smiles didn't exist at Azkaban. No one had ever smiled, not even stern, grey-haired Mr Crouch, who had marched into the prison in his impeccable grey suit, watching his only son crying and pleading and pulling his equally hysterical wife away from the boy. The thing had watched them - the stony-faced man and the still-weeping wife - leave, and had gone to the blonde-haired boy's cell, and had found the wife, rocking backwards and forwards in silence. _

_She'd screamed a high, terrified cry when she saw the Dementor gliding closer and closer to her. In one scabbed hand, it clutched a flask of slowly bubbling, mud-like substance. She'd taken it, drank it, and had transformed from her own shape to that of her blonde-haired son. _

_When she died, after a few more deliveries, the Dementor had hovered just for a few seconds longer than the others, over the gravestone. The stone read _BARTEMIUS CROUCH JR, _carved in deep_.

_And slowly, in the earth, the woman turned, and whispered, "Thankyou..."_

_Occasionally, the Dementors found one good memory, hoarded and hidden away in a futile attempt to keep it from the sucking power of the creatures, and when they found it, because they _always_ found it, the Dementors squabbled over it like alley cats fighting over a few leftover scraps of meat. _

_And, slowly, they starved like the prisoners in the cells. _

_Then the... what did the humans call them... woman, that was it, had come, been dragged in, kicking and screaming and then still, flaccid and limp on the floor of her darkness-flooded cell. The Dementor remembered its... _her_... face, with long coppery hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. The Dementor had no concept of beautiful,_ _but the woman was. _

_The Dementor moved closer. It was the only one guarding her cell tonight, for some strange reason. It could feel the vitality pulsing from her sleeping form, and it was transfixed by the play of the low light on her face, making her hair shine like metal, where it caught the light her skin like alabaster already despite only the few nights that she'd spent in Azkaban, pale, her face thin and nearly fleshless. _

_It drifted through the bars. It took the woman's face in its grey, decaying hands, and the tip of one of its fingers dropped off. _

_The Dementor clamped its circular black pit of a mouth over the woman's, in a disgusting parody of a kiss. It began to suck. The woman woke up. She struggled, and desperately tried to shut her mouth, but it was no use. She felt the looming black shape draw her into the black folds of its cloak. It was as though it was trying to suck all the air from her lungs; the pull intensified with a sudden stab of pain, as though it was ripping away the lining of her lungs. Then she felt the pull go deeper, searching through her for something. _

_The Dementor felt the woman stop struggling. It began to suck again, gripping its victim with a clasp that didn't fit its thin, elongated, starving limbs and grey, rotting, black-nailed hands. _

_It felt the feelings come in a rushing flood. There was the woman, only now she was a small girl, surrounded by a sea of wrapping paper, holding a doll that still had a scrap of brightly coloured paper tangled in its hair. _

_Then the woman was older, although she looked only a few years younger than she was now. She was cradling a small round shape that was making a great deal of crying/hiccupping noises, and the woman was smiling faintly. _

_Now she was here, lying very still now, with a bluish aura emanating from her mouth, before the thing the Dementor had been searching for drifted from her lips. _

_The Dementor contemplated it with wonder. It traced the light's outline in the air with one rotting hand, and the thing shivered at the proximity to the thing, and wavered, and began to fall, twirling and twisting like a ballerina, back towards the woman's mouth. The Dementor delicately extended a hand, lifted its victim's face back to its own swirling nebula vortex of a mouth, and sucked until the blue light shivered its way into its mouth. _

_And the taste... the _taste_... like sunlight on a summer evening, flooding over everything until it is bathed in a pool of golden light..._

_And the feeling vanished into the nebula darkness of the space inside it. The woman gasped once, just once, and her spirit subsided. _

_And _they_ \- the dark guards who have no souls - took the agonised shell of the woman by the arms and dragged her away..._

* * *

_Another memory now, dark and wet and very cold. A scarlet caterpillar wound its chuff-chuffing way across the country. It was a train, white clouds of steam puffing from it into the blackness of the night and the driving diagonal rain. The Dementors were swooping through the rain and the dark, following the train, nearly invisible against the blackness. _

_The swarm drifted lower, found a door near the front of the crimson caterpillar, and boarded, sending the poor driver into gibbering fits of shivers and fear. The man pulled a lever, and the train hissed and stopped. The lights clicked off, plunging the train into pitch darkness to match the rainy night outside. _

_The black creatures in their sodden, near-transparent robes trod silently through the train. Frost spread across the floor and began crawling up the walls. Doors slid open at a single touch from a rotting hand, and people were huddled in their seats, owls, cats, and toads were silent in their owners' cages, carriers or hands. The students drew their feet up off the floor and shivered. Girls were curled up as far away from the door as possible, boys were trying not to run the same way. _

_The Dementor glided up the train. It came to a compartment that felt promising, full of terror and the smell of new memories. It reached out with one decaying grey hand, and its robes rippled and flapped in anticipation. _

_Inside, just visible through the white patterns of frost coating the glass, were three students, one owl, on rat and one cat were shivering in their seats, and near the back of the compartment was a man huddled underneath a thick cloak, maybe asleep, and the cloak was tweedy and rather shabby. On the frosted-over windowpane was a handprint-shaped gap in the white covering of frost. A bottle of frozen pumpkin juice was sitting on the sill, seeming too bright and orange in the black stillness. _

"_Ow! Ron, that's my foot!" The girl was glaring at the red-haired boy. The second boy, the kid with the Sellotaped glasses and messy black hair, was sitting, a little hunched up, in his seat, ignoring the two others arguing until - "Ow! Hermione, watch where you're going!"_

"_Sorry, Harry!"_

_The Dementor, tired of their childish bickering by now, opened the door and glided silently inside the compartment. The girl gave a little half-scream before the smothering, freezing aura of the creature spread over the room. The boy felt particularly interesting. The Dementor glided over to him; the boy stiffened, staring up at the empty eye sockets. _

_The creature felt the flow of feelings, and lapped them up greedily, demanding more, much more. There was screaming, desperate terrified begging, beginning in the Dementor's head now, and it knew that the noise was mirrored in the boy's equally terrified mind._

* * *

_Harry felt the creature's cold aura descending into his lungs like they were filling up with freezing water. The thing was making a rattling, sucking sound that might have been breathing in anything else. Mist was swirling through his vision, pushing his mind into a sea of grey-white fog. Then the screaming began:_

"No! No, please, not Harry! Not Harry!" _The woman's voice was shrill with fear and it sounded as though she was begging. Harry could picture her standing in front of a cot, shielding her baby son from the white hand that had emerged from under the black cloak, holding a wand delicately, balanced on the tips of the long white fingers - _

"Stand aside, you silly girl. Stand aside, now!"_ The second voice was high and cold, merciless as a snake. _

"No, please not Harry, take me, kill me instead - " _Desperate begging now, stretched to the edge. _

"Stand aside, girl!" _The voice was_ _commanding, high, cold as ice, red eyes staring, as red as the woman's hair - _

"Not Harry, I'll do anything - "

"_Avada Kedrava!_"

_And Lily Potter fell like a marionette whose strings had been cut._

* * *

_Harry was drowning in the white mist filling his mind; every happy feeling that he'd ever experienced in his entire life was streaming past him in a Northern Lights of memory. _

_The Dementor continued to suck. _

_Then the cloaked figure that had been hunched in its seat was standing, wand held out. The figure twitched the wand, and white light spilled out of the tip, and the Dementor couldn't find a purchase on it, it could take the feelings but there was too much, swamping its brain. _

_The creature backed away from the blinding light, but the other figure, its outline blurred and indistinct, advanced towards the Dementor, holding the wand like it was a sword or something. _

_The Dementor raised a scabbed hand to cover its face - the feelings were melding into agony now, tearing through it. It writhed in the air, helpless to save itself, unable to flee from the searing pain of the emotions. And the man holding the wand was smiling, smiling as the creature let out telepathic screams and curled in on itself, its robes twisting and unravelling, falling away into nothing, to reveal the naked form of the Dementor, curled so its face touched its knees and was hidden, with its arms wrapped around its legs. _

_Lupin dropped the wand, the white light of the Patronus vanished, and he covered his mouth to muffle a scream. _

_The body of the Dementor was covered in scabby sores and deep bloodless wounds, and older scars showed on its grey skin. Sparse, stringy hair hung, lank and lifeless, to its shoulders, and its arms and legs were long and the thing was skinny to the point of skeletal, elbows, knees, pelvis and collarbone standing out as though there was no flesh underneath the skin. Its fingers and toes were long, and its long nails were bloody, dirty and cracked. Torn black rags, the remnants of its dark robe, still clung to it in places, managing to preserve what little modesty the Dementor possessed. The veins that laced, black and blank and stationary, all over its thin body did not pulse with the rhythm of life. The thing, denuded of its protection from the prying eyes of others, looked vulnerable and pitiful in the low light cast by the _Lumos_ spell from the tip of Lupin's wand. _

_Then it turned its face, which had been hidden against its legs, and Hermione gave another odd half-scream, and Ron gasped._

_Eyes, wide white blind eyes, were shining, overlarge and staring, from their once-empty sockets, and they seemed to pour their own grey-white light, murky like the bottom of a pond, across the room, searching, and they focused on Harry, lying pale and statue-like, green eyes wide, on the floor of the compartment. It swooped down over him, and latched its mouth over Harry's. _

"_Expecto Patronum!" Lupin shouted again, and the Dementor broke away, made one last terrible, agonised cry, echoing in their heads, and then fled out of the open door, robes billowing around it. Frost began to slowly drip off the window. _

"_Lumos."_

"_Harry! Harry!"_

"_Wake up, mate!"_

* * *

_A Quidditch match, slightly dulled by the driving diagonal rain and the howling gale that was screaming its displeasure, was spreading its noise and the tempting flavour of excitement across the soaked grounds. The Dementors grouped around the castle sensed it, and stirred restlessly at their posts at the doors. _

_They were hungry, and they swarmed..._

_Now they were a lot closer, swooping through the sky, ignoring the rain and the wind. People in different-coloured robes on broomsticks were flying around and were trying to be heard over the weather. _

_Then... the black-haired boy was wearing scarlet robes, and the red fabric flew wildly in the howling wind. His glasses and face were streaked with rain, and he flew nearly into the Dementor's face. Without a second of hesitation, it latched on to the open, surprised mouth and _sucked_. _

_It heard a muffled cry from the boy, and he hit the creature, but the boy might as well have been punching a brick wall. The Dementor sucked one more time, savouring the memories, then flew back, for the moment satisfied. _

_The black-haired boy fell from the broomstick, which was swerving violently in the gale, and he tumbled down through the rain and the empty air, his broomstick in freefall beside him._

* * *

_It was a warm and balmy summer night in a small urban town, the houses partitioned by neatly trimmed hedges and fronted by equally neat gardens and driveways. There was a complete absence of any breeze, and the temperature was somewhat sticky by now. Cars still growled through the night, their lights spilling illumination into the darkness of the road that passed Magnolia Crescent. _

_People were gone from the street that Privet Drive, all asleep in their houses or watching some late-night television. The abandoned, graffiti-clad park swings creaked in the slight breeze, and the sound was ominous, hanging like the lingering molecules of spray paint that had been used by the group of laughing teenage boys who'd been there earlier, still spreading its taint into the air._

_The black shapes of two Dementors appeared, their grey, their eyeless faces uncovered and their black robes drawn back to expose bony ribcages. They glided through the town, and frost spread over the ground and just as quickly melted away when they'd gone. _

_They turned into an alleyway, and the yellow lights lining the place immediately flickered off as soon as they entered. _

_Two teenage boys were walking slowly towards them, arguing. One was skinny and wore glasses and had jet-black hair, and the other had dark brown hair but was much fatter. The skinny boy's green eyes widened when he saw them, and he pulled a thin stick out of his pocket that the Dementors recognised as a wand, and it lit up, a single point of light in the choking blackness. _

_One Dementor glided towards the fat boy, and he slipped on the ice quickly forming and fell, and the first Dementor clamped its mouth over his. The other boy dropped his wand, and darkness engulfed them in its black jaws. _

"_Where's - wand - Lumos!" Light bloomed in the darkness. _

_The second Dementor swooped down, coming closer, forcing Harry's chin upwards, but the boy raised his wand:_

"_Expecto Patronum!" _

_The stag erupted from the end of Harry's wand, and the Dementor backed away and glided down the alley._

"_Get the other one!" Harry shouted, and, putting its proud antlered head down, the stag charged at the one frantically sucking at Dudley's firmly shut mouth. It turned, and followed its companion. _

_The night became balmy and quiet again. _

_Until it was split by Aunt Petunia's shriek of "Dudley!"_

* * *

_A woman dressed in pink, a silly little bow perched on top of her head, was sitting on a raised platform, a smug smile on her toad-like face. Her cat Patronus stalked up and down, glowing with happiness. _

_The Dementors gathered around the terrified woman chained to the chair were holding back their hunger... for now. _

"_Took? I didn't t-take it from anyone... I bought it in Diagon Alley when I was eleven years old... It ch-chose me." The woman was staring up at the toad-faced one. _

_The tall man in the black robes - the Dementors could see him - was standing just behind the scared-looking, wispy little witch holding ink, a sheet of blank parchment and a quill pen. _

"_Muffliato." The man whispered. The wispy witch jumped out of her skin, nearly upsetting the bottle of ink. There was some whispering, then the man underneath the invisibility cloak shouted something, there were two bursts of red light, and the man with the ponytail and the woman in pink slumped forwards. The cat Patronus vanished. The Dementors swarmed around the woman, and one put a grey arm around her neck and squeezed. She choked, opening her mouth, and instantly another Dementor had taken hold of her chin so she couldn't shut her mouth. _

"_Harry, Mrs Cattermole!" _

_The tall man and the tiny witch ran towards the chair. The woman addressed as Mrs Cattermole - Dementors never took any notice of names - was struggling against both the creatures and her chains in desperation. The Dementors encircled her, stretching out their rotting hands and sucking._

_Patronuses burst into the air, and the stag cantered around the hall. The woman that was chained to the chair was released as the wispy little witch muttered something and prodded the metal. Mrs Cattermole climbed out of the chair; she was trembling and her face was pale. _

"_Come on!" The tall man ran from the room, with Mrs Cattermole and the tiny wispy witch. The Dementors followed, keeping just out of the light of the Patronuses, and the figures ran faster. They found the prisoners and got them out of corridor leading to the courtroom. The Dementors followed, gliding faster now. A small blonde-haired girl, about nine years old and running a little slower than the rest, lagged behind. A rotting arm reached out and grabbed her around the wais. It began to drag her backwards into the seething crowd of Dementors. She screamed desperately, but the others were too busy running to try and get to her. The girl, surrounded by the creatures, felt their long nails digging into her arms and the grey face of one looming into hers, latching its dark vortex of a mouth over hers..._

_Suck. Scream. Suck. _

"_Help me, someone help me, please -"_

_There was a tall pale man standing in a corridor that branched off the main one; he was wearing black robes and he had long hair that was so blonde it was nearly white. His eyes were a piercing grey, visible even in the darkness. He stared unblinkingly at the girl, grey eyes boring into her. _

"_Would you like it to be quick?" he asked. His voice was quiet but it somehow carried all the way to her. He pulled a wand out of the cane leant against the wall beside him, and the snake's-head handle seemed to hiss, and its emerald eyes seemed to blink and glitter. He raised the wand. _

_But the golden lift was rising out of the lower levels now, and she couldn't do anything, felt the memories rising inside her, inexorably drawn towards the sucking mouth of the Dementor. She screamed one last time... "Please, someone, anyone, help me! E-Expecto Patronum!" _

_Light, formless and shapeless, blossomed, and she ran, trying to push the fear out of her mind, but the swarm of Dementors was closer than the lift, and they herded her up until her back pressed against a pillar. The light vanished. Fear and darkness flooded in, and the pale man was still standing at the entrance to the other corridor. He watched impassively as the Dementors did their work, then left to follow the lift, swarming up the shaft. _

_Lucius Malfoy walked slowly towards the body of the girl, his wand still in his hand. She was still breathing, but he knew that she wasn't exactly alive. _

"_I could have made it quick, you know. It needn't have happened like this." _

_The girl's eyes rolled in her pale face, aimless and very nearly lifeless. A black boot came down on her right hand, hard, but she didn't react. _

"_Interesting. So one of these doesn't feel pain. Crucio."_

_Again, there was no reaction. _

_Lucius turned and called down the corridor, "Minister! I've found something!"_

_Pius Thicknesse came striding down the corridor, wand in hand, his splendid black-and-gold robes billowing behind him. _

"_Lucius? What is it?" _

"_A Mudblood, Minister. It's been Kissed, though."_

_Thicknesse placed his foot on the girl's chest, then pressed down hard, and there was the sickening _crack_ of a rib breaking. She moved weakly, and moaned. The Minister for Magic relented the pressure, and removed the boot from the girl's chest. _

"_Kill it, Lucius."_

"_Are you sure, Minister?"  
Thicknesse's face was set and stony. "Yes, Lucius. It is a Mudblood, therefore it is expendable. Kill it."_

_Lucius, not one drop of remorse in his grey eyes, raised the snake-handled wand. He pointed it directly at the girl. _

"_Father? What are you doing?"_

_Lucius turned to the pale grey-eyed boy standing in the black corridor. The Minister turned on his heel and left. Lucius glared at his son. "I might ask you the same thing, Draco. Why are you not at school?" _

_"Contrary to your beliefs, there are such things as holidays, Father."_

"_How did you get in?" Lucius was fiddling with the handle of his wand.  
"Never you mind. What the _hell_ are you doing?"_

"_This Mudblood has been Kissed by the Dementors. I was... putting it out of its misery."_

_Draco looked down at the girl, a pitiful sight, lying helplessly on the cold floor. "Can we take her... I mean it... home?"_

_Lucius stared at him. "Why would we take a fugitive into our house?"  
"Because we're all human, Father." Draco moved to pick up the girl, but an invisible barrier stopped him. "Father!" _

"_Draco, if you try to take that Mudblood home, I shall take... drastic steps."_

"_You wouldn't. I'm your _son_."_

_Lucius put a hand on his son's arm. "Please, Draco, see sense. We can't take it home, it's beyond our help."_

_Draco stared at him, incredulous, disbelieving. "Father, we have to try." The girl moaned again, and Draco reached down to take her hand, dispelling the invisible barrier with a little wave of his wand. _

"_Crucio!" Lucius's face was stony and impassive as Draco's screams echoed around the dungeons of the lowest level. "I said I'd take drastic steps."_

_Gasping from the pain, Draco looked up at his father. "You just don't get it, do you? This place is wrong, it shouldn't be like this."_

"_It's the natural order reasserting itself. Wizards come first." _

"_No, Father. We're all human, just listen to me for once - "_

"_Crucio!" _

_When Draco's screams had ceased, Lucius stared down at the boy. "Do you want me to do that again? I assure you that I will if need be."_

"_N-No, Father." Draco was very pale, and he was shaking. _

"_Then get up and kill the Mudblood. You'd be doing it a favour, believe me."_

_Draco stood up, a little shakily. He pointed his wand at the girl, and his hand was trembling. "Father - "_

"_Do it."_

_Draco pulled the girl to her feet instead, and the girl swayed, her eyes half-closed, barely breathing. _

"_Draco - "_

"_Goodbye, Father." Draco gave his father a respectful, formal nod, turned on the spot, and Dissaparated, taking the girl with him._

* * *

_A different memory, now. Flying, flying through the nebula blackness of the night sky, their black robes flapping in the wind whipping at them. _

_Below them, a mirror image was flying, and the robed ranks of the Death Eaters were flying a little way below their companions, and frost flew in tiny sharp ice chips through the air, as the Dementors froze the air as they flew. A few streaks of green light flickered from the tips of the Death Eaters' wands, and the white light of the few Patronuses that were herding the Dementors was very bright in the blackness. It hurt, but the Dementors did not mind. They'd been promised a feast. _

_Soon they reached their destination, and the castle, filled with light, seemed to deny them all entry. Bangs and faint shouts were carried across the grounds to them, and the wizards trooped away and left the Dementors in the Forest, hovering over the dark trees. _

_The cold auras emanating from them made intricate patterns of frost form on the leaves of the trees below._

_They settled over the forest, and it whispered darkly below them. Then the Dementors drifted down. The ground froze beneath their ragged robes. _

_They sucked on the air, and it rattled in their thin chests._

_It was dark. _

_Then the tiny pinpoints of three lit wands penetrated the darkness, just a little. The shapes of three people became slowly visible. They were staggering around, nearly blind in the blackness. _

_Suddenly the one in front gasped, as the Dementors cold hit them. He stumbled, his wand slack in his hand. _

"_Harry!" The shrill scream of a girl carried through the thick darkness. _

_The Dementors closed in, and the boy backed away as their despair flowed over him, settling like a sheet of lead over his body, dragging him down. They could feel the boy's happiness draining away. _

_They saw a twisting silvery shape burst into the air from the direction of the girl. It flickered feebly, then faded. Another silver shape from the figure next to the girl burst into the air, and also faded. _

_The Dementors closed in, sucking their way towards their victims, scabbed hands outstretched. The boy fell to his knees. "Harry!" The girl shouted again, running to him, but the Dementors forced her back, and the soul-deep sucking overcame her and she too fell to the ground; there was a single scream from where she lay, and then nothing. The last figure backed away, but the Dementors seemed too busy with their other victims to notice him. _

Harry Potter..._ the voice of Lord Voldemort emanated across the forest, worming into their heads. _

_Then a silver hare, a boar and a fox came leaping through the trees towards them, and following along behind them were another three people. The Dementors around Hermione scattered and she stood up rather shakily, but the ones quickly gathering around Harry were more persistent. _

"_Come on, Harry," a second female voice, calm and amazingly nonchalant, came from the place where the hare gambolled in the air, silhouetting its owner. "Think of something happy."_

_The Dementors continued to suck, but less enthusiastically now, the Patronuses were starting to affect them. _

"_Think of something happy." _

"_Something... _happy_?" The boy on the ground moaned. _

_The Dementors sensed the boy's despair, and sucked harder, ignoring the silvery Patronuses, which were beginning to fade. The air protested, whistling and wailing as it passed through the Dementors' bony mouths. _

_There was another groan, and the boy called Harry struggled to get up off the ground, but a Dementor took him by the shoulders and forced him back to the leafy ground; Harry felt his shoulder blades grind together. He tried desperately, futilely, to get the thing off him, but the long sinewy arms held him tightly, trapping his arms, and they didn't relinquish their grip. Harry felt the sucking grow in intensity as more and more of the Dementors crowded around him, each sucking their hardest, each wanting the prize of taking his soul. _

_Harry tried to scream, the pull of each of the creatures' mouths was pure, undiluted __agony, but the bony mouth clamped hard over his own prevented any such sound from escaping his lips. As he stared up into the empty eyes, trying not give the creatures what they wanted, he knew that he could only stop them a little longer. Somehow the promise of release, of nothing, of no feeling, would be such a relief; he just wanted the all-consuming agony of the sucking to end. The Patronuses were just faint white blurs in the air now, barely there. _

_Suck. _

_Groan. _

_Suck. The rattle of breath in a thin chest, the faint breathing of Harry getting shallower, fainter, barely there now, panting. Suddenly, he found the air in his lungs to scream, but the mouths were sucking harder, demanding. _

_Suck._

_Another muffled scream, but Harry's voice fainter than his breathing now, barely even audible. The boy shifted slightly, weakly, on the dry, frost-covered layer of leaves. Distorted memories were leaving Harry faster now, a constant stream of blurring images. The Dementors were close now, close to taking it, sucking, always sucking. The creatures' arms with their long nails were cutting into his skin, but it was nothing compared to the sucking, the horrible omnipresent sucking, everywhere, all around him, inside him, and the white mist was filling him up like liquid. He could hear his mother screaming inside his head now. _

_Hermione's shining otter was twisting in the air again, but the bright silvery form of the boar - Ernie Macmillan's Patronus - flickered once and went out. Ernie stumbled backwards, away from the Dementors. He fell onto the leafy ground, and a few of the Dementors swarmed around him, reaching out with their rotting hands to cup his face, delicately tracing the outlines of his wide, terrified eyes with their long black nails; Ernie tried to scream, and two more lifted him by the shoulders and pushed him up against a tree, before forcing his mouth open. Two streams of blurred, rapidly moving images were lighting up the night now. Another group of Dementors broke away from the others, advancing towards Hermione, their robes obscuring the silver light of the otter, and it went out. _

_Neville's rapidly fading fox and Ron's equally faint terrier scratched at the faces of the Dementors. Our Dementor backed away, trying to run, but it was knocked over. It righted itself, and fled, desperate to get away from the hated, agonising light of the Patronuses. A moment later it returned, joining the group that was feasting on the helpless body of Hermione. _

_Luna's hare, however, grew stronger in the darkness, blocking the Dementors that were still trying to run. Neville's fox and Ron's terrier became brighter as well, and concentrated on shooing the Dementors away from Ernie, who was still pressed up against the tree. The black-robed creatures looked up, their empty eye sockets lit up momentarily in grisly relief by the silver light of the Patronuses flowing over their grey skin. Then they let go of the boy's face, glided away at top speed, and Ernie slid down the tree trunk to the ground. A last few ghostly wisps of memory emerged from his mouth, then faded into nothing. _

_Shakily, surrounded by the warmth of the Patronuses, Ernie stood up, putting a hand against the tree for support. Harry followed suit, still gasping for breath. There was a frozen leaf trapped in his black hair, and there was blood around his mouth from the bony ridges of the Dementors' mouths cutting into his skin. Both of the boys were pale in the light of the Patronuses. _

_But Hermione, visible again now the Dementors had gone, was lying on the ground, her wand beside her. She was very still, her brown eyes wide and unseeing, and there was a faint fading blue light in the air above her wide-open mouth._

* * *

"You were there?" Hermione whispered, back in the real world.

The Dementor nodded, silent. But the thoughts betrayed it. _I did it._

* * *

"_Hermione!" Ron shouted. He ran over to her, and knelt down in the frost-covered leaves beside her. "Hermione, no!" _

_The rest gathered round her. Ernie and Harry were still pale and shaking, and Neville looked rather drained. Luna was crying, tears sliding down her face. The hare made one last gambol in the air, licked one paw and washed its ears, then its silver body flickered and faded. But the Dementors didn't reappear. _

_Then the Dementor __bent over the little group, it robes brushing their backs, gentle as a knife blade against a neck. There were gasps, and hands reached for wands. _Please... _said the Dementor, its voice rasping, not used to talking_... can help your... friend...

"_What are you?" Luna whispered, reaching for its rotting hand, invitingly extended towards her. "Luna, no!" Neville shouted, trying to drag her back. She slapped him, not hard, but he still took a step away. _

"_For God's sake, Neville! It can help, can't you hear it talking?"  
"Talking?" Ernie said, baffled. "Dementors can't talk!"_

Can help friend...

"_It can help Hermione!" Luna said, half-shouting. _

_The Dementor reached down, and cupped Hermione's face in its hands, spreading dirt and blood across her face. Ron, despite Luna's loud protests, hit it with the end of his wand, and it cowered like a puppy that had been kicked, holding the limp empty body of Hermione. _

_Then the Dementor began to make retching sounds. Blue light issued from its mouth, and it grew brighter as the creature drew Hermione closer. _

_Finally, after some retching at length, the blue ball of light that was the soul - _Hermione's_ soul - floated out of the Dementor's mouth, into Hermione's. She jerked, and blue sparks traced their way over her limbs. Her eyes widened, the spark of awareness coming back into them. She blinked._

"_Hermione..." Ron whispered. _

_The Dementor was no longer there._

* * *

"_You._"

_Yes... forgive me... it was the... the _hunger_..._

Hermione took the creature's hand. "It's alright. I understand what it feels like now, having no soul."

The Dementor looked down at the crumpled figure of the man slumped against the wall of the alley.

_I am sorry for that... But I think that he was a 'Death Eater', is that what you call them in your language?_

"Yes."

_Come with me, please. I do not want to be alone anymore. _

"Would - would you like a name?"  
_A name? Other than 'hideous creature', 'carrier of death and darkness', 'faceless terror that can suck out your soul', and similar? _

"Yes."

_Then... I would like a name. _

"How about... Arthur?"

_Yes... I like that name..._

The Dementor - Arthur - scooped Hermione up into its long arms and carried her into the freezing night sky.

And the sky slowly filled up with stars.

* * *

**Thankyou for reading! Please ****review!**

**Katie Trillion xx**


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